Bobby Fischer, 1943-2008

Bobby Fischer, the 11th world chess champion is dead at 64. He died in Reykjavik, Iceland where he moved in 2005 after being released from prison in Japan. An article at Chessbase tells the story here.

Fischer beat Boris Spassky to take the crown as the first perhaps "world-famous" chess champion. At the height of the cold-war between the United States and the Soviet Union, I remember learning chess from my dad when I was 4-5 years old, right around the time Fischer was making newspaper headlines. My dad was in his early 20's, and was playing chess and listening to jazz with a lot of other young men.

Thanks to Dad for teaching me the great game, which turned out to be a big deal for me. I was the best player in my peer group perhaps till I reached high school, and I developed a love for gaming from my early encounters with Dad on our Sunday night sessions after our family study.

Chess: touch and go

Love this article about a guy who makes $200 / day with a portable chess setup.

More on Kramnik vs. Deep Fritz

Update: Kramnik loses to computer, score 4:2.

The current world champion of chess, Vladimir Kramnik, is now into game #4 against perhaps the most powerful chess computer program in the world: Deep Fritz.

Three of the four games have been draws, but in game two Kramnik made an unbelievable blunder and lost, overlooking an extremely simple move to put him in checkmate!

Check out all the articles on Chessbase here.

Polgar sez Blitz Chess = ESPN

Susan Polgar has again appeared on the cover of a major news publication, this time on New York Newsday. Her subject? How Blitz Chess can put chess on ESPN and on the public eye. A quote:

"In America, people want action," she said in her accented English. "And they want it now. But chess, if it's promoted in the right way, can be exciting."

Susan is currently the #1 ranked female player in the U.S., and is one of the top players in the world. Here thoughts on the likelyhood of chess being a TV sport are quite interesting. Check them out here.

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By the way, we average around 5 hits a day here at BSC, and we've had quite a few visits recently from someone in Mountain View, California recently, as well as one from Lima, Peru! Thanks for viewing and reading our humble site! (gotta love Google Analytics)

Desert, Chess960, Empire Builder

My Northwest airlines flight back from Detroit to Wilkes-Barre was cancelled on Wednesday night (apparently the pilots had spent too much time in the air and there were no pilots available). I called my Dad and he and Mom shot up from Toledo and picked me up!

Took a 2.5 day vacation in Toledo, and of course Dad and I had to get some boardgames in -

In two days we played about 20 games of Knizia's Through the Desert, a lovely little go-like game I have written about before. Victories went back and forth, we probably split the games, although I had a 3-game win streak going at the end. We tried to talk Mom into a game, but she wasn't biting.

We brought out Chess once, and tried Bobby Fischer's Chess960 (Fischerandom). We took turns picking pieces for a pseudo-random setup. The white queen was in the right corner, next to a rook, then king, then bishop and rook, then knight, knight and bishop. A bizarre battle took place on the opposite side of the board after Dad castled. We got to about 40 moves and I managed a queen-backed checkmate.

Stopped by a game store on Sylvania Ave. in Toledo (the Game Room) that I had never been too before, and the owner was actually one of the friendliest and nicest I've ever met. Mind Games (my 'home store') has been good to me for years, but all the owners and workers are generally very passive. They typically only engage you in conversation (despite the fact that I have been shopping there for 20 years) if you initiate it. Sometimes I wander around in total silence. Here, the well stocked store had 4-5 customers shopping, painting, reading, and the owner was chatting with everyone.

Sadly, and no doubt slightly under the spell of this nice game store owner, I grabbed a copy (at 10% off) of Empire Builder, from Mayfair. Published originally in 1980, it has spawned numerous expansions, and sold very well over the years. On the strength of reputation (and vacationish weakness), I plunked down my $35 and boy am I sorry I did.

Let me just say that this is a classic example of why I don't play American games anymore.

No, let me add some more: Too long ('Geek reports 1.5 hours plus .5 per player), ugly components (butt-ugly would be a better description), super dry theme and mechanics (move goods from point-a to point-b by drawing from point-to-point on a white board with a crayon), odd damaging random events, and the ability for a veteran to memorize ideal locations - forcing an inexperienced player to spend tons of time hunting for possible delivery locations that you might have missed, zero interaction, loads of down time waiting for your turn (which often consists of turning in 3 cards, and drawing three more - exciting!)... I mean come ON.

I have come to the conclusion that I need to stay out of game stores/never buy anything that I haven't thoroughly researched/never buy an American game again/stop assuming that the number of sales/expansions has anything to do with how much I will like the game. (Probably the only games with huge popularity that I enjoy are: Carcassone, Puerto Rico, Settlers)

One fact that was not published on the box (but was in the manual) was the original date of publication: 1980. This edition had different box art, and had a 2002 date on it, making me think it was perhaps something new that I had missed. Nope. The 80's were pretty sad overall for gaming (except perhaps some conflict sims that I no longer play due to length: Squard Leader, Star Fleet Battles, etc.). Empire Builder is proof. Fun maybe 25 years ago before the internet and modern publishing techniques reduced my attention span and raised my expectations (i.e. made actual quality important), but not today. Ebay, here we come.

Polgar defeats 1,112, sets 4 records

Who beats 1,112 people in 15 hours at Chess?

Susan Polgar wins and sets four world records:

• Most Simultaneous Games Played: official record against 326 players: 309 wins, 14 draws and 3 losses = 96.93% in 16 hours and 30 minutes (the previous record was 321 games, with 294 wins, 26 draws, 1 loss = 95.64%, by IM Andrew Martin, England).
• Most games won: 309 (Andrew Martin: 294)
• Highest percentage: 96.93% (Andrew Martin: 95.64%)
• 1,131 Consecutive Games Played: Overall statistics which included 551 opponents: 1,112 wins, 16 draws and 3 losses = 99.03% (previous record: 1102 games by WGM Anna-Maria Botsari, Greece)

Thanks to Chessbase.com for photos and information on this amazing event.

The WallStreetJournal has another excellent article on Susan, here.

Susan Polgar attempts simul record

A chess "simul" is a multiple players simultaneous match, played generally as an exibition to promote a players prowess or the game itself. I played in a 'simul' against one of the best players in the city of Toledo, back in 1991. He was the president of the Toledo Chess Club, and conducted the simul as a form of a membership drive. Held at a local library, there were about 20-25 players. My good friend, Mark Hamilton (now deceased) and I were eliminated pretty quickly. Only one player managed a draw, a 10 year-old boy. (We suspected that he may have been let to draw, as his estatic parents immediately asked about how to join the club, and lessons with the president. Mission accomplished?)

Anyway, Susan Polgar, a very interesting lady in the world of chess, is attempting the world record in simultaneous chess on Aug. 1-2. She will play 350 opponents in a 24 hour period. Check out the link on Chessbase, here. Susan at points (and currently?) is the number one ranked female chess player in the world, and she and her sisters are GrandMasters, and have played with Bobby Fischer as children (he stayed for a while with their family while on the run from the American's, amoung others).

Fischerandom/Chess 960

There's been quite a stir in the chess community lately with Bobby Fischer coming out of hiding, and ending up in the pokey in Japan, then eventually being taken in by Iceland. Now, there are rumors that he may come back to competitive chess. I'm a fan of Fischer's play (although he's a bit of a nut job outside the game), and especially the new form of chess he designed (and made public in 1996):

Fischerandom Chess, or Chess960.

The basic idea is that pieces are randomly sorted on the back row, so that there are 960 different possible starting positions, making a lifetime study of opening moves impossible. It's starting to be taken seriously by the chess community apparently, and there's even a computer world championship being staged in August.

Check out this random board position generator. Then, would you like to play a game?